The junkyard economist

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today's episode, we ride through the streets of San Francisco with a long-time junkman, Jon Rolston.

Jon has spent the last two decades clearing out houses and offices of their junk. He's found all sorts of items: a life-time supply of toilet paper, gold rings, $20,000 in cash. Over the years, he's developed a keen eye for what has value and what might sell. He's become a kind of trash savant.

As we ride with Jon, he shows us the whole ecosystem of how our reusable trash gets dealt with — from metals (ferrous and non-ferrous) to tires to cardboard. And we see how our junk can sometimes get a second chance at life.

If you can understand the junk market like Jon, you can understand dozens of trends in our economy.

This episode was hosted by Erika Beras and James Sneed, and produced by James Sneed with help from Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Jess Jiang. Engineering by Josh Newell. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:25.0	John Ralston is in a nook under the stairs.
0:30.0	He is on his hands and knees brushing rat poop off of old boxes and he's digging through
0:36.7	what looks to me like total junk.
0:41.0	Car parts scrap wood
0:45.0	not clothing
0:48.0	John's clearing out of a house
0:50.0	John's clearing out all the junk out of a house in San Francisco
0:52.0	the same family has filled it with it stuff for a
0:54.8	hundred years. The house just sold and everything inside needs to go.
1:00.4	In this nook, there's chairs, a par axle.
1:03.0	Yeah, a little tin scrap.
1:05.0	There's stacks upon stacks of cardboard boxes.
1:12.0	Some are wet, some are moly.
1:15.0	Can food, turkey, sweet potato, oh cat food.
1:21.0	This is similar.
1:23.7	Photo albums from the 1940s, a box full of tangled extension cords.
	...

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